Start Here — All 28 Letters in Order

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Twenty-Eight Letters to the Immigrant

From someone who crossed to someone who is about to. The paperwork, the first winter, the money that surprises you, what homesickness actually is, what the country owes you, what you owe the people back home. Start at Letter 01.

READ IN ORDER — 28 LETTERS

01	Before You Pack
02	The Paperwork Is the First Test
03	What the Visa Does Not Give You
04	The First Winter
05	Money Will Surprise You (not yet published)
06	Call Home, But Know What Calling Costs (not yet published)
07	The Job Is Not the Life (not yet published)
08	Nobody Is Coming to Help You (not yet published)
09	Build Your Own People (not yet published)
10	What Homesickness Actually Is (not yet published)
11	The Language Inside the Language (not yet published)
12	Do Not Perform Success (not yet published)
13	The Body Keeps Score (not yet published)
14	What You Owe the People Back Home (not yet published)
15	The System Is Not Your Enemy (not yet published)
16	Your Degree Is a Starting Point (not yet published)
17	Silence Can Be Intelligent (not yet published)
18	Find One Thing That Is Only Yours (not yet published)
19	The Five-Year Mark (not yet published)
20	When You Think About Going Back (not yet published)
21	What Integration Actually Means (not yet published)
22	The Second Generation (not yet published)
23	You Will Change Whether You Want To or Not (not yet published)
24	The Friends You Make Abroad (not yet published)
25	What the Country Owes You (not yet published)
26	Build Something That Lasts (not yet published)
27	The Letter You Will Write Someday (not yet published)
28	Dear Immigrant (not yet published)

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Dear Immigrant: The First Winter

Letter 04

Re: The First Winter

Dear Immigrant,

If you are going somewhere with winter, the first winter will be unlike anything you have experienced. I do not mean this only in the obvious sense of the cold, though the cold is real and it is more total than you have imagined. I mean it in the sense that winter will reorganize your interior life in ways you have not prepared for.

In winter in the northern hemisphere, the sun sets in the early afternoon. You will leave work in the dark. You will wake in the dark. The days will be short and grey and the cold will make going outside a transaction rather than a habit. The world will contract to the distance between the places you must go. You will spend more time alone than you have ever spent in your life.

The combination of isolation and darkness and cold produces something in immigrants that I have heard described many ways — as depression, as homesickness, as culture shock — but that I think of simply as the body registering an absence. You have left a place that had warmth and density and the constant presence of people who knew you. The winter makes that absence physical. You feel it in your chest when you walk outside. You feel it at four pm when the sky goes dark and you are not yet home.

Some things help: finding a community — a church, a cultural association, a sports team, anything that puts you regularly in the presence of people who will eventually know your name. Maintaining a physical routine. Getting outside even when it is cold, because the light, however thin, is better than the absence of light. Cooking food that connects you to somewhere warm.

The winter ends. They all end. But the first one is long, and I want you to know it is coming and to prepare your interior for it, not just your wardrobe.

From someone who made it through several winters,
A former immigrant

dearimmigrant.com

Supreme Court Today: Immigration Advocates Tell Justices Trump’s Turnback Policy Violated Law

Thousands denied right to seek asylum and forced back into danger; case has implications for refugee rights

March 24, 2026, Washington, D.C. – Immigration advocates argued today before the Supreme Court that the Trump administration’s turnback policy violated federal immigration law. Under the now-defunct policy, immigration officers at official border crossings physically and indefinitely blocked people seeking safety from setting foot on U.S. soil, flouting their legal responsibility to inspect and process those requesting asylum. 

“For more than 45 years, Congress has guaranteed people arriving at our borders the right to seek asylum, consistent with our international treaty obligations,” said Kelsi Corkran, Supreme Court Director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, who argued the case. “Yet this Administration believes that Congress gave it discretion to completely ignore those requirements, and turn back those who are seeking refuge from persecution at its whim. Nothing in the law supports that result.”  

The turnback policy, euphemistically dubbed “metering” by government officials, broke with longstanding practice and violated the law. It denied thousands the right to seek asylum, forcing them to languish in hazardous conditions in Mexico or return to the peril they had fled.

In 2017, Al Otro Lado, a binational organization that provides free legal and humanitarian aid to immigrants, and a group of asylum seekers brought a class action suit challenging the policy, which the courts ruled unlawful in both 2022 and 2024. Although the turnback policy has not been in effect since 2021, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to overturn the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision declaring the policy unlawful.

“The right to seek asylum is not a policy preference or a loophole— it is a promise to human beings in their most desperate hour, a promise forged after the world witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust and said ‘never again’. Seeking asylum is not like taking a number at a deli counter and waiting for your turn,” said Nicole Elizabeth Ramos, Border Rights Project Director at Al Otro Lado, plaintiff in the case. “The people turned away at our border are fleeing rape, torture, kidnapping, and death threats. You cannot tell families running for their lives to go back and wait in danger because their suffering is inconvenient. We brought this case because the United States made a legal and moral commitment to protect people fleeing persecution. The question before the Court is whether that promise still means something — or whether it can be discarded when it becomes politically uncomfortable.”

For over a century, under our immigration laws, government officials have been required to inspect people seeking asylum who present themselves at designated ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border – as they must inspect all noncitizens seeking admission to the United States. This requirement ensures that the U.S. government does not send vulnerable people back to danger without giving them an opportunity to seek protection.

“The government’s turnback policy ran roughshod over our laws and treaty obligations. It fueled chaos and dysfunction at the southern border. And it was a complete humanitarian catastrophe, returning thousands of vulnerable refugees to grave harm,” said Melissa Crow, Director of Litigation at the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS). “For far too many, the turnback policy was a death sentence.We are here at the Supreme Court today for them, and for all people who continue to look to the United States as a beacon of hope, as a place where the persecuted may find safe haven. We will never stop fighting for the rights of people seeking safety at our nation’s doorstep.”

“We hope the Court rejects the administration’s cynical attempt to manipulate the meaning of the border to evade the most fundamental protections of international law and to continue to exile vulnerable asylum seekers,” said Baher Azmy, Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Our humanitarian treaty obligations, forged out of the horrors of WWII, are too important to suffer from the whims of CBP.”

“President Trump’s effort to abandon asylum seekers fleeing dangerous circumstances in fear for their lives is an unlawful overreach that imperils thousands of people – including children – in dire circumstances,” said Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward. “Democracy Forward is proud to work with these brave plaintiffs and our partners to protect the rights of people seeking asylum.”

“The Trump administration’s illegal turnback policy has flouted both U.S. and international law, all while creating massive dysfunction at our southern border,” said Rebecca Cassler, Senior Litigation Attorney at the American Immigration Council. “But most importantly, we cannot forget the people at the heart of this case — the hundreds of thousands of vulnerable asylum seekers who were sent back to danger, and in some cases, death. They deserve justice most of all.” 

For a recording of the press conference on the steps of the Supreme Court following arguments, see here.

For a recording of the interfaith vigil held outside the Court earlier this morning, see here.

For more about the case, see the campaign website, No Turning Back.

###

Al Otro Lado provides holistic legal and humanitarian support to refugees, deportees, and other migrants in the U.S. and Tijuana through a multidisciplinary, client-centered, harm reduction-based practice.  They engage in individual representation, human rights monitoring, medical-legal partnerships, and impact litigation to protect the rights of immigrants and people seeking asylum.

The American Immigration Council works to strengthen America by shaping how America thinks about and acts towards immigrants and immigration and by working toward a more fair and just immigration system that opens its doors to those in need of protection and unleashes the energy and skills that immigrants bring. The Council brings together problem solvers and employs four coordinated approaches to advance change—litigation, research, legislative and administrative advocacy, and communications.

The Center for Gender & Refugee Studies defends the human rights of courageous refugees seeking asylum in the United States. With strategic focus and unparalleled legal expertise, CGRS champions the most challenging cases, fights for due process, and promotes policies that deliver safety and justice for refugees.

The Center for Constitutional Rights works with communities under threat to fight for justice and liberation through litigation, advocacy, and strategic communications. Since 1966, the Center for Constitutional Rights has taken on oppressive systems of power, including structural racism, gender oppression, economic inequity, and governmental overreach. 

The Democracy Forward Foundation is a national legal organization that advances democracy and social progress through litigation, policy, public education, and regulatory engagement. 

The Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection is a non-partisan, public interest organization within Georgetown Law. ICAP engages in litigation, policy, and public education to defend constitutional rights and protect our democratic processes.

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Federal Court Blocks Significant Pieces of Administration’s Sweeping Immigration Appeals Rule That Eliminates Meaningful Judicial Review

Order Halts Implementation of Dangerous Steps that Would Have Dismantled Safeguards at the Board of Immigration Appeals

Washington, D.C. — The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued an order late last night in Amica Center for Immigrant Rights et al. v. Executive Office for Immigration Review et al., blocking significant pieces of the Trump-Vance administration’s new policy that sought to eliminate meaningful appellate review before the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA). 

Plaintiffs in the case include Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, Brooklyn Defender Services, Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, HIAS, and National Immigrant Justice Center. Democracy Forward, the American Immigration Council, and National Immigrant Justice Center represent the plaintiffs.

The lawsuit and motion for preliminary relief challenge the February 6, 2026, Interim Final Rule (IFR), “Appellate Procedures for the Board of Immigration Appeals,” which was set to take effect today, March 9, 2026. The IFR would have imposed sweeping changes that would have eviscerated noncitizens’ right to appeal decisions in their immigration cases that have now been blocked, including:

• Reduce the time to file most appeals from 30 days to 10 days;
• Require summary dismissal of appeals unless a majority of permanent BIA members vote within 10 days to accept the case for review; and
• Permit dismissal decisions before transcripts are created or records are transmitted.

“At a time when the due process rights of immigrants are under attack, this ruling prevents the BIA from reaching the point of near self-destruction,” said Emilie Raber, Senior Attorney at the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights. “We hope that this decision is the first step of many steps in ensuring that immigration courts reach decisions based on the law rather than on pre-determined outcomes.”

 “Today’s ruling preserves a vital avenue for judicial review in removal proceedings,” said Lucas Marquez, Director of Civil Rights & Law Reform at Brooklyn Defender Services, “And reminds government agencies to follow proper procedures when attempting to make sweeping changes to regulations.  

“This ruling keeps in place a basic, yet critical, protection for immigrants facing removal: the ability to appeal their case,” said Laura St. John, Legal Director at the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project. “As the administration continues to try to deport as many people as they can quickly and often without a fair day in court, it is critical for everyone to have the opportunity to file an appeal. Without this decision, countless immigrants with valid claims would have been hurriedly deported to dangerous conditions, forsaking due process for efficiency.” 

“Today, the court has again held the federal government to its foundational responsibility to afford basic fairness and due process to all whose rights it seeks to curtail,” said Stephen Brown, Director of Immigration Legal Services at HIAS. “We are grateful to our counsel in this case, and proud to stand with our co-plaintiffs to work for a fair immigration system.”

“Today’s ruling is an important win in the face of an administration that is intent on dismantling our immigration system at any cost, including betraying our country’s shared values of the importance of due process and access to counsel,” said Mary Georgevich, Senior Litigation Attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center. “While imperfect, the Board of Immigration Appeals is the body that Congress has mandated to review deportation orders when the immigration courts get it wrong. Allowing the Trump administration’s reckless proposal to block immigrants from a fair opportunity for review of bad decisions would have resulted in people being returned to danger and families unjustly separated, all to serve a racist mass deportation agenda. We are grateful the court seemed to see this proposed rule for what it was and is ruling to uphold both due process and rule of law.” 

“Today’s decision makes it clear that the Trump-Vance administration cannot play games with the immigration appeals system to eliminate basic due process and fast-track deportations,” said Erez Reuveni, Senior Counsel at Democracy Forward, who presented the oral argument. “Once again, no matter how hard this administration tries to hide its cruel and unlawful actions behind an ‘immigration policy,’ a federal court has made clear that the government must follow the law and cannot strip people of their basic rights. This is another demonstration that litigation is powerful. We will continue representing our plaintiffs in court to defend their rights and hold this administration accountable.”

“This order protects a critical safeguard in our immigration system: the ability to appeal a court decision,” said Suchita Mathur, Senior Litigation Attorney at the American Immigration Council. “This rule would have led to the rushed deportations of untold people before their cases could even be properly reviewed. Today’s decision helps protect basic fairness in our immigration courts.”

The IFR was issued without the required notice-and-comment rulemaking period and fundamentally restructures appellate review in removal proceedings. By requiring summary dismissal unless the full Board acts within 10 days — before transcripts are created — the rule makes meaningful review functionally impossible in most cases.

The legal team at Democracy Forward includes Erez Reuveni, Allyson Scher, Catherine Carroll, and Robin Thurston. Counsel at American Immigration Council include Michelle Lapointe and Suchi Mathur.

Read the opinion here and the order here.

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Dear Immigrant: What the Visa Does Not Give You

Letter 03

Re: What the Visa Does Not Give You

Dear Immigrant,

The visa gives you permission to be present. It does not give you belonging, safety, stability, or the right to be treated with dignity. Those things are separate from the visa and some of them are not guaranteed by anything.

I want to be precise about what legal status gives you and what it does not, because the conflation of the two — the assumption that the visa solves the problem rather than simply opening a door — is one of the most common and most damaging misunderstandings I have seen immigrants carry.

Legal status means the government has agreed to let you be here under certain conditions. It does not mean the society has agreed to welcome you. It does not mean your employer will treat you fairly, your landlord will maintain your apartment, your colleagues will include you, your neighbors will acknowledge you. These things happen or they do not happen based on the specific people involved and the specific conditions of the place you have arrived in. The visa is not a guarantee of any of them.

The gap between legal permission to be present and actual belonging is the gap you will spend years trying to close. Some immigrants close it. Some do not, and not because they failed but because the society they arrived in was not structured to receive them fully. Both outcomes are possible. The visa does not determine which one.

Know what you have when you have the visa. Know what you still need to build. The visa is the beginning of the work, not the completion of it.

The door is open. What is behind it is still to be determined.

From the other side of several doors,
A former immigrant

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Legal Groups Sue to Block Rule Gutting Immigration Appeals

Emergency Filing Seeks Court Order to Halt Implementation of Interim Final Rule that Dismantles Safeguards at the Board of Immigration Appeals

Washington, D.C., Feb. 26, 2026 — The American Immigration Council and a coalition of other legal groups, including the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, Brooklyn Defender Services, Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, HIAS, and National Immigrant Justice Center, filed a lawsuit and emergency motion today to block a new interim final rule issued by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) that would effectively eliminate meaningful appellate review before the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA).

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, challenges the February 6, 2026, Interim Final Rule (IFR) titled Appellate Procedures for the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is set to take effect on March 9, 2026.

As detailed in the complaint, the IFR imposes sweeping changes that would eviscerate noncitizens’ right to appeal decisions in their immigration cases, including:

• Reduce the time to file most appeals from 30 days to 10 days;
• Require summary dismissal of appeals unless a majority of permanent BIA members vote within 10 days to accept the case for review;
• Permit dismissal decisions before transcripts are created or records are transmitted;
• Impose simultaneous 20-day briefing schedules with extensions allowed only in narrow “exceptional circumstances”;
• Eliminate reply briefs unless specifically invited; and
• Impose rigid case completion deadlines and concentrate decision-making authority in agency leadership.

“The BIA Interim Final Rule makes a mockery of due process. In addition to taking away virtually any benefit the BIA could provide immigrants, it will wreak havoc on people with cases in immigration court or federal appellate courts,” said Emilie Raber, Senior Attorney at the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights. “Litigants who are children, are detained, do not have a lawyer, have disabilities, or speak rare languages will be disproportionately harmed by this Interim Final Rule.”

“The Interim Final Rule creates a barrier to appellate review in removal proceedings and strikes at the heart of due process,” said Lucas Marquez, Director of Civil Rights & Law Reform at Brooklyn Defender Services. “The Rule will result in the deportation of people who are eligible for immigration relief — people who have valid legal claims that an immigration judge got it wrong — simply because the Board of Immigration Appeals will no longer be an avenue to fairly review their cases.”

“This interim final rule completely decimates the process to appeal a case in front of the BIA,” said Laura St. John, Legal Director at the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project. “It will render the vast majority of immigrants unable to appeal their cases and will be particularly harmful to those who most need the recourse of an appeal process, including pro se litigants, vulnerable children, Indigenous language speakers, and people in immigration detention. It will be nearly impossible for most detained pro se individuals to submit a notice of appeal in just 10 days, and without the ability to appeal, many people will be unjustly deported back to dangerous or even life-threatening conditions.” 

“Our clients deserve a fair chance in the immigration court system,” said Stephen Brown, Director of Immigration Legal Services at HIAS.  “Without access to a meaningful appeal process, people who have fled persecution and violence could face dangerous consequences, including the risk of being sent back to a place that is not safe for them.  We are proud to join this legal challenge, and to take a stand against a policy change that will have seismic impact on the ability of legal service providers such as HIAS to support immigrants in navigating a complex and ever-changing legal system.

““It is hard to overstate the potential human toll of the changes proposed in this rule,” said Lisa Koop, director of legal services at the National Immigrant Justice Center, which is co-counsel and an organizational plaintiff in the lawsuit. “Curtailing due process in this manner guarantees that legal services providers like ours will be less able to help our clients defend against unjust deportation, and many people who would otherwise be eligible for asylum or other legal status in the United States will never have the opportunity to pursue protection under our laws.”

According to the filings, the IFR was issued without the required notice-and-comment rulemaking period and fundamentally restructures appellate review in removal proceedings. Plaintiffs argue that by requiring summary dismissal unless the full Board acts within 10 days — before transcripts are created — the rule makes meaningful review functionally impossible in most cases.

Plaintiffs argue the rule violates the Administrative Procedure Act, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the Fifth Amendment, which protects people from deprivation of liberty without due process of law. They are asking the court to block the rule’s effective date and prevent implementation while the case proceeds.

The organizations are seeking a preliminary relief to prevent the rule from taking effect on March 9, 2026, and to keep it blocked while the litigation proceeds.

The case is Amica Center for Immigrant Rights v. EOIR.

View the complaint here.

View the stay motion here.

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How to Reclaim Your Lost Canadian Citizenship Under Bill C-3

Many people around the world may now qualify for Canadian citizenship because of recent changes to Canadian law. Bill C-3 corrects past citizenship rules and allows many individuals to reclaim citizenship that was previously lost or denied.

The post How to Reclaim Your Lost Canadian Citizenship Under Bill C-3 appeared first on Canadim.

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Dear Immigrant: The Paperwork Is the First Test

Letter 02

Re: The Paperwork Is the First Test

Dear Immigrant,

The first thing the new country will ask of you is not your skills, not your intelligence, not your character. It will ask for documents. The right documents, in the right order, submitted to the right office by the right deadline, accompanied by the right fee. This is the first test and it is not a test of anything you were trained for.

The paperwork is designed for people who already understand the system — who know which form follows which form, which office handles which application, what the difference between a received receipt and an approved receipt means for your status. If you do not already know these things, you will learn them the way immigrants always learn them: by making mistakes and by asking people who made mistakes before you.

The paperwork is not fair. It is deliberately complex in ways that advantage people with resources — people who can pay lawyers, who have time to navigate bureaucracies, who speak the administrative language of the country fluently. If you do not have these advantages, the system will be harder for you. This is not an accident. Immigration systems are designed to filter. You are being filtered. Knowing this does not make it easier, but it makes it less personal.

Find the organizations that help immigrants navigate the paperwork. They exist in most cities. They are usually underfunded and oversubscribed. Use them anyway. The people who work there have seen your situation before and they know things that you do not know yet.

Keep copies of everything. Every document you submit, every receipt you receive, every letter they send you. Keep them in a folder. Keep the folder somewhere you will not lose it. Your administrative record is your legal existence in the new country. Treat it accordingly.

The paperwork will end. The life will continue. Get through the paperwork.

From someone who learned to keep better records,
A former immigrant

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What to Expect from Canada Immigration in 2026

Canadian immigration is already changing, with new policies and rule updates introduced earlier this year. It comes as no surprise that the start of a new year has brought changes in how people can come to Canada, stay in Canada, and become permanent residents or citizens. Although some Canadian immigration pathways have become more limited, others are expanding depending on who you are and where you are coming from.

The post What to Expect from Canada Immigration in 2026 appeared first on Canadim.

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Report: Immigration Detention Is Bigger, Harsher, and Less Accountable Than Ever

Trump Administration Targets People with No Criminal Record and Uses Detention to Pressure Them to Give Up Their Cases 

Washington DC, Jan. 14 Wednesday — A new report released today by the American Immigration Council shows that the Trump administration is locking up hundreds of thousands of people— most with no criminal record—into a harsh immigration detention system that makes it near impossible to fight their cases or secure release.  

READ THE REPORT HERE.

The report, Immigration Detention Expansion in Trump’s Second Term, reveals how historic funding increases and aggressive enforcement tactics have pushed immigration detention to the highest level in U.S. history. Rather than addressing serious public safety threats, the government is spending billions on mass detention to pressure people who pose no threat to give up their cases and accept deportation. 

As the Trump administration expands its mass deportation agenda, the consequences extend far beyond detention centers. DHS’s aggressive tactics during large-scale enforcement actions in American neighborhoods around the country have already led to tragic, preventable deaths, revealing the human cost of an immigration enforcement system that operates with little oversight or accountability. 

“This has absolutely nothing to do with law and order. Under mass deportation, we’re seeing the construction of a mass immigration detention system on a scale the United States has never seen, in which people with no criminal record are routinely locked up with no clear path to release,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. “Over the next three years, billions of more dollars will be poured into a detention system that is on track to rival the entire federal criminal prison system. The goal is not public safety, but to pressure people into giving up their rights and accepting deportation.” 

READ THE REPORT HERE.

According to the report, the number of people held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention rose nearly 75 percent in 2025, climbing from roughly 40,000 at the start of the year to 66,000 by the start of December, the highest level ever recorded. And with Congress authorizing $45 billion dollars in new detention funding, the report warns that the system could more than triple in size over the next four years. 

Major findings of the report include: 

• There is a dramatic shift in who is being detained. Arrests of people with no criminal record surged by 2,450 percent in Trump’s first year, driven by increases in tactics like “at-large” arrests, roving patrols, worksite raids, and re-arrests of people attending immigration court hearings or ICE check-ins. The percent of people arrested by ICE and held in detention with no criminal record rose from 6 percent in January to 41 percent by December. 

• The detention system has expanded so rapidly that already deleterious conditions have worsened. Through the start of December, ICE was using over 100 more facilities to detain immigrants than at the start of the year. For the first time ever, thousands of immigrants arrested in the interior are being detained in hastily-constructed tent camps, where conditions are brutal. More people died in ICE detention in 2025 than in the last four years combined. 

• People are stripped of their chance to ask a judge for release. New policies have made prolonged, indefinite detention the norm. The Trump administration is pursuing policies that strip millions of people, if they are detained, of the right to have a bond hearing where they can make a case to be released into their community while their immigration case is under review, including for those with decades of life in the United States.  

• The administration is using detention to drive up deportations. By November 2025, for every person released from ICE detention, more than fourteen were deported directly from custody. This is compared to an approximate one-to-two ratio from a year earlier.   

• As the administration expands detention, it is simultaneously gutting oversight. The rapid growth of detention has been paired with deep cuts to internal watchdogs and new restrictions on congressional inspections. This erosion of oversight has consequences that extend beyond detention facilities themselves: as ICE is operating with fewer checks on its authority, aggressive interior enforcement in cities has led to preventable harm and deaths, underscoring how a lack of accountability is putting lives at risk.  

“The Trump administration continues to falsely claim it’s going after the ‘worst of the worst,’ but public safety is just a pretext for locking up immigrants and pushing them to abdicate their cases.,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council. “Horrific conditions inside detention facilities break people into accepting deportation which fuels the administration’s inhumane deportation quotas and goals.” 

The report profiles three people whose experiences illustrate the real-world impact of this historic expansion of detention: 

• A green card holder and father of two, detained by ICE at an airport because of a past conviction he was told would not jeopardize his legal status. ICE then neglected his medical issues for months while he was detained. 

• An asylum seeker who was granted humanitarian protection by an immigration judge, yet remains detained months later, without explanation, as ICE seeks to deport her to a third country, and who says she was treated better in federal prison when serving time for an immigration offense.  

• A DACA recipient, detained following a criminal arrest, who was transferred repeatedly across the country as ICE searched for available bed space and witnessed consistently poor conditions across multiple different detention centers. 

With billions of additional dollars already approved, the report warns that immigration detention is poised to grow even larger, deepening the human, legal, and financial costs for families, communities, and the country as a whole. 

“This is a system built to produce deportations, not justice,” said Reichlin-Melnick. “When detention becomes the default response to immigration cases, the costs are borne by everyone. Families are torn apart, due process is set aside, and billions of taxpayer dollars are wasted on these unnecessary and cruel policies that do nothing to increase public safety.”

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Can Renee Good’s Family Sue ICE in the Aftermath of Her Killing? The Answer Is Complicated

On the snowy streets of Minneapolis in the early days of January 2026, an ICE officer shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good—a U.S. citizen and mother driving a Honda Pilot with stuffed animals hanging out of the glove compartment. She had reportedly just dropped off her six-year-old child at school. Multiple bystander videos captured the shooting and the distressing aftermath, which included ICE agents preventing a doctor from reaching Good. These images compound what the U.S. has experienced since the start of the second Trump administration – social media feeds filled with videos of ICE and Border Patrol agents smashing car windows during enforcement and firing pepper spray projectiles and tear gas canisters at those who showed up to witness the human toll of immigration enforcement in their communities.

In the wake of Good’s killing, many have naturally asked how her family might hold the individual officer or federal government accountable for her death. The answer is complicated, and any legal fight is riddled with pitfalls.

The well-known legal defense of qualified immunity shields law enforcement agents from having to defend against civil rights lawsuits for monetary compensation (called “damages”) unless the right was “clearly established” such that a “reasonable officer” would understand his conduct violated the law.

What is less well understood is that—thanks to the Supreme Court—there is virtually no way left to sue individual federal officers for monetary damages for violating individuals’ constitutional rights. Local and state law enforcement who violate people’s rights can be sued for under a Reconstruction-era law, 42 U.S.C. Section 1983. No similar statute exists for federal agents. Instead, the Supreme Court in 1971 ruled in a case called Bivens v. Six Unnamed Known Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics that an individual could sue federal drug agents for violating his Fourth Amendment rights in conducting an unlawful search and arrest.

But since that time—and especially under the Roberts Court—the Supreme Court has eviscerated Bivens. From Border Patrol agents fatally shooting a Mexican teenager across the U.S.-Mexico border to agents on the U.S.-Canada border allegedly throwing the owner of a bed and breakfast to the ground and later retaliating against him, the Supreme Court made clear that it will not allow suits against federal officers in any circumstances beyond the facts of Bivens itself and two (now very dated) additional cases. While the Court has not overruled Bivens, it has severely weakened its utility.

Vice President J.D. Vance wrongly claimed that the ICE officer who shot Renee Good is entitled to “absolute immunity.” That is patently incorrect—federal agents acting under color of law can potentially be prosecuted criminally for willfully depriving an individual of their civil rights. A state prosecution is also theoretically possible.

In addition, individuals can still sue the federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) for injuries committed at the hands of federal employees. Indeed, the federal government paid nearly $5 million to settle an FTCA case brought by the family of Ashli Babbitt, a woman killed by a Capitol Police officer on January 6, 2021 while storming the Capitol.

But the reality is that obtaining legal accountability for actions like the killing of Renee Good through civil lawsuits is challenging by design.

DHS agents have committed excessive force before this administration. During an ICE/IRS raid on a meatpacking plant in East Tennessee in 2018, surveillance video captured an ICE agent putting his boot on the neck of a worker who was lying face down on the floor for 25 seconds—a dangerous practice that could result in serious injury or death. That same agent was accused of punching a different worker in the face during the raid. The only reason the “boot to the neck” incident came to light at all was because of a civil lawsuit against the individual agents.

If courts rule that individuals cannot sue federal agents for rights violations or DHS agents successfully assert qualified immunity in such cases, such evidence may never be revealed. With the ubiquity of smartphone cameras and the growing brazenness of DHS’ violence on the streets of U.S. cities, growing public awareness of law enforcement abuse has the potential to lead to policy change. Efforts to enact federal statutes to codify Bivens have not progressed in Congress, but could gain momentum as people from across the ideological spectrum push back against federal law enforcement overreach.

No amount of money will bring back people killed by federal agents, but money damages are an important part of the U.S. legal system, promoting accountability and serving as a deterrent against future rights abuses. A right without a remedy is a hollow promise—all but ensuring that federal agents will continue to engage in actions that endanger and kill people.

Photo by Chad Davis

The post Can Renee Good’s Family Sue ICE in the Aftermath of Her Killing? The Answer Is Complicated appeared first on American Immigration Council.

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via Dear ImmigrantDear Immigrant

Dear Immigrant: Before You Pack

Letter 01

Re: Before You Pack

Dear Immigrant,

You are going to pack too much. Everyone does. You will pack for a version of the destination that exists in your imagination — a version assembled from photographs, from stories told by people who went before you, from the things you have seen online. That version of the place is real in some ways and wrong in others, and the things you pack for it will reflect that mix of accuracy and imagination.

I am not going to tell you what to pack. You have people who will tell you what to pack. I want to tell you what you cannot pack, because these are the things that matter and the things that the lists do not mention.

You cannot pack the ease of being understood. The way that people in the place you are leaving know you without explanation — know your family, your neighborhood, your school, your accent, what your name means, what your people eat, what you do at funerals. You will leave all of that behind and you will not be able to carry it with you. It will be there when you come back, but it will not be with you in the new place. Not for a long time. Maybe not ever in quite the same way.

You cannot pack the assumption that you belong. At home, belonging is ambient — it is the air around you, not something you notice because you have never been without it. In the new place, belonging is something you build, slowly, through consistency and presence and the patient work of making yourself known to people who did not know you before. It takes longer than you expect.

Pack what you need for the body. Understand that what you need for the interior will have to be rebuilt from scratch. This is harder than the packing. It is also the actual work.

The flight is the easy part.

From the other side of that flight,
A former immigrant

dearimmigrant.com